I was taught that it is not nice to call somebody a liar, but if you hear these things from a search engine optimizer, there is a good chance they are lying to you. They are either lying about the facts, or lying that they know the job of SEO. In either case, it is unreliable information that can cost companies a lot of money and can have some disastrous results.

Let’s have some fun and review these common lies told by SEO. If you have stories to tell, please add your experience in the comments of this blog post.

SEO Lie Number One: Meta Tags

One of the most common lies I have ever heard is when the SEO says, “You just need some keyword meta tags to improve your ranking.” The truth is that meta descriptions are important, but the keywords tag is mostly meaningless. Meta tags are a minor part of SEO and if somebody tells you that adding meta tags is your answer, they are lying to you. Here is some more information on the topic: “SEO Meta Tags: Oh, You Must Be Another SEO Expert!”

SEO Lie Number Two: Search Engine Submissions

Here is one of my favorite SEO lies. The SEO says something like “We will submit your website to 40,000 search engines and directories.” This is not only an ineffective thing to do, it can also be very damaging when your website links are in a bunch of penalized websites called “link farms”.

If you just must submit your website somewhere to make you feel productive, submit it to DMOZ and Yahoo! Otherwise, leave it to the search engines. They will find you if you have something that other people believe is worth linking to.

Never trust the SEO who sells directory submissions and pink ponies. REF: SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies For Sale

I have heard percentages of marketing efforts that do not work. I have heard and witnessed those statistics enough to reach the top of my throat, and to declare that most marketing is little more than miserable failure, like the last squeak of a mouse in a trap. In fact, if you held my job for a day or two, you could even taste it like bad acid reflux. It is really true though, that most marketing falls on deaf ears, and the masses are immune to it. This is largely because these days, anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can bill themselves as an expert marketer. The barrier of entry no longer requires aptitude, experience, or even desire for anything other than somebody else’s money.

The odds of a marketer to recognize the root of our field as serving others with respect, dignity, and a desire to serve them has diminished to a point that skepticism is allowed to take over as a prevalent factor. This means that trust … hard-earned and well-deserved trust is due for a resurgence. A recall to the very root of the word “sell” is what it takes to be really great in a marketplace. If you have not learned this from your marketing pedigree just yet, the word “sell”, in this context, owes its origin to the Norwegian word “selje”. The literal translation is “to serve”, and that still means a lot to some of us.

The job of a professional marketer is to figure out that tiny fraction which does work. What we do is to serve our clients in a way which reflects our desire to benefit more than only ourselves, and to serve others at our highest capabilities. It means that a great marketer must look beyond the benefit of a few bucks today and understand the greater benefit of tomorrow.